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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23568793">(in)dependent variable</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyclockwork/pseuds/simplyclockwork'>simplyclockwork</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes &amp; Related Fandoms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ficlet, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Fluffy, I really don't know what this is, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock thinks the scientific method is romantic, Sherlock-centric, Strange narrative style, soft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:53:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,539</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23568793</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyclockwork/pseuds/simplyclockwork</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A poetic prose exploration of the softer sides of life shared between Sherlock and John.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sherlock Holmes/John Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>102</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Sherlock and John Stories that Ease the Soul</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>(in)dependent variable</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">

        <li>
          Translation into Русский available: 
            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23700055">(Не)зависимые переменные</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Unicorn/pseuds/Little_Unicorn">Little_Unicorn</a>
        </li>


    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time they kiss is on a too-bright winter day. Snow swirls in the air, thick flakes landing to melt in Sherlock’s hair. John tastes like hot chocolate, and his blue-tinged lips are a stark, warm contrast to the chill sinking into Sherlock’s bones.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Rain patters against the windows in the living room, cheery fire dancing reflected in the glass panes. John’s fingers are on Sherlock’s neck, and his tongue is in his mouth. He tastes like whiskey and excitement. Thunder and burning electricity. Sherlock murmurs noises into John’s throat, and John breathes them like the air in his lungs.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Fireflies flicker in a field. John’s breathing is loud and uneven, echoing in heavy air. In less than ten minutes, a bullet will shatter the silence. The fireflies will wink out, and John will gasp Sherlock’s name with relief, teeth scraping gratitude over his tongue. </p><p>Later, they will fall into bed together. Tangle in sheets and one another for the first time. John will be tender and gentle, coaxing Sherlock’s body to open for him. The smell of John’s sweat-slick skin will remind Sherlock of the time he went to the beach as a child. Sand between his toes and strawberry ice cream. His climax feels like exsanguination. </p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Life together is a cycle. Thrumming repetitions of danger and salvation, cases and solve-rates. If Sherlock were asked to bottle the sensory definitions of their life, he would be hard-pressed to limit the result to a singular sense memory. Life with John smells like takeaway food and warm tea, tastes of milky-sweet breath, sounds like crap telly, looks like silver-brown-gold hair, sturdy fingers and callused hands and ocean-deep eyes. Feels like love. </p><p>There is a case, one which lands John in the back of a wailing ambulance. Watching a familiar face gone pale is terror, and John’s hand, cold and stiff in his, is falling off the edge of the Earth. When John opens his eyes, Sherlock sees calm seas and clear skies, and the shock of it tumbles three short words from his mouth. Kissing John in a hospital bed tastes like band-aids and antiseptic and aching muscles, and Sherlock can’t get enough. John repeats those integral words in the dark, wrapped in bandages and Sherlock’s arms, and they feel like gossamer spiderwebs on Sherlock’s skin.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Their first serious fight rolls over Sherlock like a cataclysm. The hair stands at attention on his neck, soldiery-stiff like John vibrating in the doorway when Sherlock begs him to stay. To talk, to breathe, to listen to the apologetic, uneven cadence of his heart. There will be more nights like these, they both know, and the anger flows from John in a stream, first from his lips, then from his eyes. Sherlock tastes the sea on his face in the dark of their bedroom. This time, there is no memory of strawberry ice cream. Just faint fear and the strange, empty ache he feels whenever he looks out over the ocean. </p><p>John will forgive him. He always does, despite Sherlock’s habit of repeating mistakes. John’s forgiveness sounds like the rustle of hands on Sherlock’s clothed waist and tastes like John’s peppermint toothpaste. These are grounded facts, reality painted in broad strokes of vibrant blue and verdant green. Sherlock wants to smear the colours of their skin between his knuckles. Doing his best impression of a paintbrush, he covers John’s body with the patterns of his restless mouth and flickering fingertips.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>The scientific method requires identical results to confirm a hypothesis. Sherlock drags this perspective, kicking and screaming, into every corner of his life. When it comes to John, this means repetition. Rhythmic recreation of every kiss, every touch, each and every single brush of skin-to-skin contact. Sherlock is thorough, explicit, entirely absolute in painstaking attention to detail. John spends a day splayed naked across the couch with a detective bent over him, touching the tip of his index finger to every orange-and-gold freckle marking John’s skin. Then, and only then, does Sherlock move onto the moles, of which there are five, caught in secret places hidden by worn jumpers and comfortable jeans. John hums and snorts, and his giggles when Sherlock strokes the spots where he is ticklish are cherished sounds in Sherlock’s ears. </p><p>These are new words to Sherlock, added to his vocabulary through trial and error. Cherished. Sentiment. Adored. Loved. Knowing these words is like tattooing fire into his skin. Kissing John is like swallowing smoke. Resting his head on John’s chest is listening to the internal combustion engine, and touching his skin is like trying to hold onto an inferno. John is fire and water and air and earth, and Sherlock is the chaos that somehow doesn’t scatter the elements to the four corners of the planet. Instead, he reigns them in and breathes through the maelstrom they create. John is ice forming on the window at winter midnight, and the sun rising in the morning to turn solid to liquid. When he tastes like coffee, Sherlock wants to drive him from the flat and into the streets of London to breathe in smog and fog and thick, choking city noise. When John tastes like wine, red, white or dessert, Sherlock does his best impression of drowning in their bed, letting John devour him with teeth and tongue and roving hands. </p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>There is a ring. Silver, catching the overhead light in a shop window. Dead and browning leaves blow past on currents of air, and Sherlock stares. The shopkeeper catches his eye, but Sherlock’s hands find their way into the deep and cluttered pockets of his coat, and he sweeps away with the biting wind. Over takeaway and fine white wine, Sherlock watches John’s mouth say words that sound like warmth and crackling campfires. Thinks about curved metal and fidgets his fingers along the edge of a frayed napkin. John touches his hand with the smile he saves for Sherlock alone, and Sherlock knows he will go back to the store. First thing tomorrow, he will point and pass his card, and he will see that ring on John’s empty finger before the next night is through.</p><p>True to form, a case lands in his lap half past midnight. Launched out of the front door with John on his heels, Sherlock nearly eats a bullet at the end of an alley. John is angry, filled to the brim with flagrant fire and too-dry tinder. It’s almost a fight, an argument building and building, Sherlock’s mouth tasting bitter and acrid. The words spill out, and John goes still, goes silent, goes ice-floe frozen, hands raised over his head in mid-gesture when Sherlock breathes his almost-secret between them.</p><p>
  <em> I was going to buy a ring. </em>
</p><p>As suspected, John cannot stay mad. Not when a self-proclaimed sociopath grips his arms and kisses his face with a tongue softened by clarity, sugar-sweet words, and gasping admissions of unadulterated adoration. In bed that night, John doesn’t just taste like saltwater. He is the crashing, oncoming sea, and Sherlock drowns with gratitude between gasps for air, sucked away in the tidal wave. </p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>The sky is a silver slate grey, and the ring fits John like a second skin. Sherlock likes the way the cold metal feels against his knuckles when their hands fit together, likes the chill, sharp edge under his finger with John curled against his side. Blue-white-opalescent light flickers from the tv screen paint neon on John’s face, and Sherlock’s arms, made loose by slow, languid kissing in the kitchen, rest around broad shoulders. </p><p>Sherlock’s phone doesn’t stop buzzing for a week, and neither does John’s. They both pretend to hate it, but Sherlock sees the soft way John reads congratulations from the screen of an iPhone and likes the look on him. Loves it when he sees it stretch John’s mouth into a slow smile, prompted by Lestrade clasping his arm, and thumping Sherlock on the back hard enough to make his teeth rattle. As thankful as he is for gregarious Gregory, he still makes sure to call him Gavin.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Semantics and syntax. Clever, colliding, collusive layering of words. Independent and dependent variables. Change one, change the other. Meaning derived from the context of the spoken and the unsaid. Subtext. Sherlock speaks subtext as a second language, while John hides it in the flickers of expression over his face, the subtle movements of his talented hands. The silver glint of metal, mirrored images, clasping fingers. Sherlock has always and never found meaning in the words of others beyond simple analysis. Now, he feels it, slick, across his skin, recited words echoed back from a God-fearing man’s mouth in a near-empty field, populated by the few and far between.</p><p>There are no gunshots today. Nothing to tear through the silence but clapping hands and the press of John’s mouth. The first time they kissed was on a too-bright winter day, snowflakes melting in ice trails through Sherlock’s hair. Today, an almost-warm sun paints gold on John’s skin, sets fire to the delicate ends of his pale lashes. His eyes are the sea, the fine salt-spray of the tide, and Sherlock tastes his mouth with the memory of strawberry ice cream on his tongue. </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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